


Giftings

by orphan_account



Category: Black Cat
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-02-01
Updated: 2006-02-01
Packaged: 2017-11-28 19:14:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/677919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'Train will drink any variety as long as it isn’t yoghurt and it isn’t soy; sometimes she thinks that he will drink anything that wouldn’t kill him, as well as a number of things that would, and the fuss is just for appearances, because normal people are picky about their food and clothes and where they sleep. '</p>
            </blockquote>





	Giftings

**Author's Note:**

> Ficlet written for LJ community ame_soeur. The challenge was to write a fic that included the following: 4 red objects, 3 food items, 2 socks, and 1 quote, within 65 minutes. Slightly over the time limit, but other things should be okay.

  
  
Eve is watching Train drink milk. The label on the bottle says  _Fresh pasteurized full-cream dairy_ ; the cap, maple-leaf red with ridges running across its circumference, has been tossed to the ground – lost among empty cartons of long-life and reduced fat and chocolate-flavored and homogenized. Train will drink any variety as long as it isn’t yoghurt and it isn’t soy; sometimes she thinks that he will drink anything that wouldn’t kill him, as well as a number of things that would, and the fuss is just for appearances, because normal people are picky about their food and clothes and where they sleep.   
  
Eve knows she is not a normal girl. Sven is probably not a normal man either, although Sven is not so much normal and male as he is her life and the future and purely  _Sven_. Sven, now, is crouched behind the sofa retrieving scraps of crumpled-up paper and mechanical parts and food bits – the rotting cherries Train used to start a food fight three days ago, a slender, maroon wire left over from his last bomb-making endeavour, a pair of carmine socks too small for anyone but Eve to wear.   
  
Train bought the socks for her last week, together with a rag doll,  _The Collected Works of Shakespeare_  and a pack of mint-flavoured gum. Eve stuck the gum to Train’s forehead and left the doll lying on a bench in Avista Children’s Park. She kept the book because it would be a waste not to read it before throwing it out, but make no mistake, it will be burnt.   
  
Keeping Train’s gifts would mean a failure of their rivalry, which is why she leaps across the room, scoops the socks out of Sven’s right arm, and for lack of less conspicuous alternatives, transforms her fingers into scalpels and the socks into a scarlet mess of cut wool.   
  
Sven’s eyebrows rise, his uncovered eye widens, but he says nothing. At the kitchen counter, Train looks up, milk staining his lips and his eyes woebegone. “Oh, princess. Didn’t you like them?”  
  
Eve looks at him and remembers that he can take down forty armed men in ten minutes, that his face grows cold like fire in the face of an enemy, that he is stronger, stronger, so strong she doesn’t know how to catch up. It is impossible to tell if he is being serious or not, it is impossible that he is being serious with her, and that is why she raises a hand and brings a knife down on the table, rips through leatherbound Shakespeare.   
  
Train’s expression stays plaintive for a quarter-second; surprise never registers on his face. “I’ll buy you better presents next time!” he declares, grin lopsided. Drops of milk slide past his chin, down the tendons of his neck.   
  
Eve stares down at the book, Capulet and Montague severed in half, the winter of our discontent torn into jagged edges, all of Lear’s monologues sliced through. The blade never reached The  _Taming of the Shrew_.


End file.
